In a surprising departure from protocol, the Queen has sent the Lord Chamberlain, the most senior official of the Royal Household, to see Archbishop Vincent Nichols, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, to discuss Pope Benedict XVI’s offer to Anglicans wanting to convert to Rome en masse. Read the rest of this entry »

America magazine recently gave it’s Campion Award to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams. St. Edmund Campion is one of the great and courageous English Jesuit martyrs, himself hanged in the 16th century by the Archbishop’s Anglican forebears. His feast is observed by both churches. In receiving the award, the Archbishop referred to a concept of Pope John Paul II, martyrial ecumenism by which Christians of various bodies honor one another’s martyrs as heroic witnesses for Christ, particularly when they died at the hands of other Christians. He pointed to St. Paul as the first to honor the sacredness of his own victims: Read the rest of this entry »

Having her own high moral principles as well as practical ones, it is impossible to peg the Catholic Church’s teachings as conventionally liberal or conservative in the American political lexicon. This is no less true in the struggle for healthcare reform. Principles such as Subsidiarity and Distributism stand above party politics and have the potential of breaking the current political impasse. The Catholic voice is one the US can ill afford to ignore if we want to get these major reforms right. Read the rest of this entry »